The Waschke Homestead is no stranger to long-distance travelers. My grandparents and great-grandparents were immigrants. Grandma Waschke was born in Pomerania, Germany. Grandpa Schuyleman was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My great grandparents were all born in Northern Europe. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they all travelled to Whatcom County. I went to college and graduate school in Chicago. When I was in the computer industry, I had customers all over North America and the globe whom I visited occasionally. Most of my career, my office was on the Seattle Eastside and my boss was in New York.
But the human inhabitants of the Homestead are as sessile as oysters compared to the geese grazing in the cornfields this time of year. Most of the geese that graze on the farm now are Canada Geese. Fifty years ago, I remember more white Snow Geese than gray Canada Geese. At my Schuyleman grandparents’ farm in Lynden on the Nooksack River, I often saw Trumpeter Swans in their fields.
Before I retired, I flew to New York at least once a month, sometimes more often, around 70,000 miles a year. Canada Geese, Snow Geese, and Trumpeter Swans travel from the arctic of Alaska and northern Canada to the southern U.S. and Mexico each year. Each goose probably flies 5,000 miles a year, so I had each goose beat for distance. But if you consider the number of geese, they win. I have often counted flocks of four dozen geese in the cornfield. Collectively, each of those flocks flies 240,000 miles a year. In my most traveled years I had a gold frequent flier card. The birds would be a step above platinum.
I understand that both Canada and Snow Geese are more populous now than they used to be. I haven’t seen many Snow Geese on the Waschke Homestead lately; they are around but I see them closer to the Nooksack. Canada Geese certainly are more common now on the Waschke Homestead than they were in the 1960s. According to the ornithologists and wildlife experts, the goose population, especially Canada Geese, has increased in the last decade or so for several reasons, including a decline in predators and hunting.
Canada Geese prosper among humans. One summer, fifteen years ago or so, I found myself eating lunch regularly in the executive dining room of the Allstate Insurance data center and office complex in a northern suburb of Chicago. That summer, a pair of Canada Geese hatched and raised a handful of goslings on a rooftop patio next to the dining room. They appeared to thrive on a diet of executive table scraps tossed out by the lunching actuaries.
Last summer, on the pond close to our new house in Ferndale, another pair of Canada Geese raised five goslings. My border collie, Albert, and I watched them parade to the water and paddle gracefully around the pond. When fall came and the goslings were nearly indistinguishable from the parents, they disappeared, presumably flown off to feeding grounds to the south. Obviously, these geese know how to live in small towns.
The flocks of Canada Geese on the Waschke Homestead arrive after fall harvest and graze in the fields until spring. I assume they fly north to their arctic breeding grounds. I imagine the geese on the pond follow the same pattern, but their northern breeding ground is the southern wintering territory of the Waschke Homestead geese. The southern wintering ground of the summer pond dwellers may be Mexico.
There were ten geese on the pond this morning. They’ve been paddling around for three days now. The morning they arrived, Albert and I visited them a few minutes after sunrise. All but one of the geese were resting in a cluster on the pond with their heads tucked under their wings. One goose was awake and watching, either an insomniac or designated sentry. Albert and I only visit the pond twice a day, so those wily geese could be switching places on us, but we expect this group will be gone in a few days, to be replaced by another clutch after another few days.